


Nights She Wished She Could Forget

by Nyankittypug



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Bad divorce, Divorce, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Trauma, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Abuse, Sad boi hours, Sneaking Out, Verbal Abuse, absent father, accidental verbal and emotional abuse, bad parent relationship (it’s fixed later on it the ACTUAL show but I digress), but also Gilear WAS pretty mean to her when he found out, he was trapped in a gem, not direct and “on purpose” abuse, second hand abuse?, so I guess minor verbal and emotional and mental(?) abuse when he found out, the bad kids - Freeform, why do I always torture Fig? I have no idea, yogurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25395499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyankittypug/pseuds/Nyankittypug
Summary: Fig had nights from when she still lived across the highway that she wished she could forget.
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort/Figueroth Faeth, Gilear Faeth/Sandralynn Faeth (mentioned), Sandralynn Faeth/Gorthalax The Insatiable (mentioned)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	Nights She Wished She Could Forget

**Author's Note:**

> It’s late, I’m tired, did I proof read the last half? Nope. Am I going to? I dunno I’m a weird person, goodnight <3

Fig has memories from her old house—house, rarely ever home when associated with the divorce—that she wished she could forget. Her mom never forgot, Gilear—one of her two and a half fathers(soon to be three if Sandralynn kept doing everything as good as she had been the last few months!)—never forgot, so how could they have not realized that Fig hadn’t forgotten. Fig could never forget the sounds of screaming and yelling echoing throughout the house and pushing through the floors, ceilings, and walls to get to her attic bedroom. 

She could never make the yelling stop, she had learned that quickly. She had tried in the very beginning, she had ran in between them and pleaded for them to stop yelling while bones sprouted from her skull like the grass seeds her and Gilear had spread when she was seven and missing her two front teeth. It had been a dry summer, and winter completely killed whatever grass they had left, so Fig set up a lemonade stand and Gilear sold some of his old watches once he caught on to what Fig was doing and together they went and bought grass seeds and spread them together. They had bought the wrong seeds though so barely any of it grew, growing in small patches and clumps across the yard only for the rest of it to be filled in over the years by weeds and tiny little sticker plants that hid in the grass and weeds and then poked you.

One day, when Fig was nine, a boy from down the road pushed her into a large patch while Sandralynn was at work. Fig had come running into the house wiping away tears and barreled into the kitchen where Gilear was making her a peanut butter sandwich for lunch and yogurt for himself. Gilear had turned around the moment he heard her little footsteps barreling down the hallway. She had the little stickers stuck in her legs and arms and shoulders, pricking through and sticking to her clothes, and tangled up in her hair. He was on his knee by her side immediately asking what was wrong and how he could help. 

It took them the better part of an hour, but they had gotten all of the stickers out of her before Sandralynn had gotten home. Gilear took out his phone and brought out a phone book, quickly finding the name of the boy’s mother and calling her. “Hey Delilah? Yes it is me Gilear, your son pushed Figueroth into one of those briar patches in my yard, if I see him around her again I’ll feed him to my wife’s griffin, any-who I have to get back to making lunch, I threw what we were going to have at your kid when he tried to do it a second time six minutes ago, have a good day.” The boy never came back around the Faeth house again. 

Anyway, Fig had tried to get them to stop yelling, but the little stubs that were the beginning of her horns made Gilear even redder in the face as he yelled and began to make an example of her. Sandralynn matched him nearly twice as loud, her hands going up and down and gesturing rude things that Fig knew she wasn’t allowed to copy. After a short few seconds they seemed to forget that she was in between them and Gilear moved forward to get his point across, his hand sweeping down and accidentally shoving Fig to the ground when she wouldn’t get out of his way. Sandralynn and Gilear both stopped yelling when Fig’s horns hit the floor and she screeched in pain. “Now look what you did!” Sandralynn screamed at the top of her lungs, “What I did? I did nothing, this is all your fault! If you had just been faithful then that- that THING would have never been born and we would have our daughter again!” Gilear screamed back. 

Fig didn’t try to stop the yelling after that. Fig grew...distant wasn’t the right word. Out of reach, that was it. Fig was out of reach, it was the same thing everyday, she would go to school and pretend she was happy and that everything was okay. She would hang out with her fake friends who she didn’t really like. She would walk home because there wasn’t a bus that would drive to her house and she was too young to find out how to set that up, and because Gilear refused to drive a demon to school. Fig would have one hour, one hour of “peace” before Sandralynn would come home and the yelling would start back up. 

She heard every single word, every single insult, every single jab at her, at her mother, at the man she thought was her father, and the thing she had called family for so long. Fig wished she could forget those nights. 

The nights Sandralynn and Gilear actually stopped arguing long enough to realize that they were still parents and had to feed a child were some of the worst though, when the would sit around their table and she’d try to make measly conversation only to be met with silence on Gilear’s part or half-hearted “uh-huhs” on Sandralynn’s. Some nights Gilear would just leave, and Fig would call his phone at least ten times on the home phone to remind him to eat and that she left the spare key for him under the doormat but she’d stay awake as long as she could without mom yelling at her to go to bed to let him in when he came back. Whenever he’d come back Fig was always asleep at the kitchen table with a plate of whatever her and her mother had had for dinner sitting in front of her, a yogurt cup to the side and a glass of milk beside the plate. 

Sometimes Gilear would kiss her head and eat the food. Other times he’d leave it there, too angry at the whole situation to do anything, and just walk into the living room to sleep what little sleep he could get on the couch. The worst nights though, were weekend nights. Her parents had never been very religious so Fig had never been either. But Fig got sick of praying before bed, something her friends from school had unrealizingly pier pressured her into, on the days that was constant non-stop screaming and arguing. 

Fig grew angrier and angrier with each night, more and more pissed with each fight. She decided to stop being so weak. So, she stole some money from Gilear and bought a guitar. It was the most dangerous thing she’d ever done, the most exciting. She felt a little bad at first, but then remembered everything that had happened since her horns and started protruding from her head. They were bigger now, no longer unnoticeable, and the most painful they had ever been. Her mom had bought her some horn cream to try and make it a little better, but mostly Fig just stared at the stuff. When she got home with her new guitar and a small amp she bought with her own money they were arguing again. 

Fig sighed as annoyance started to flood over her and she stomped into the room, she did that now. Fig was slowly turning from a preppy popular girl to an agitated scared teen. She was pushing away all of her “friends”, she had begun to listen to different kinds of music. She liked the punk and punk rock music she had begun listening to, she could get lost in its heavy chords and deep singers and could relate and understand the lyrics, and now SHE had a guitar, a BASS guitar. Maybe she could make music that people could get lost in too, instead of getting lost in the noise around them? Fig liked that idea. 

So, with her newfound plan forming quietly in her head, she had stomped over to where her parents were and didn’t try to get them to stop, she DID get them to stop. They were bickering just loud enough to be heard through the outside of the house, the quietest they’d been around each other all week, and Fig only had to slightly raise her voice. Fig was surprised when her voice didn’t come out happy and preppy like it had been most of her life, instead coming out gruff and angry. She didn’t show it as she tossed Gilear his wallet, it hit him in the face somehow, “Thanks for noticing I had left guys, hope we can eat dinner together tonight,” she said spitefully, fear filling he heart. She had been so afraid of getting in trouble for so long and as she turned around Sandralynn said “Is that a guitar?”

“Where did you get a guitar from?” Gilear had exlaimed, his brows furrowing in expected discomfort at the discovery. “If you guys are going to be loud all the time, I figured I could get to be loud too.” And with that she was off. Fig had transformed faster and faster with each and every coming day, one day when Gilear was shouting about how Fig didn’t even have blond hair like him she had stomped down to the kitchen in a heap of tears and sadness and rushed into her room, no matter how used to her fath—er, ahem, GILEAR’S spiteful comments didn’t mean that they would hurt any less. She found herself standing in front of this old mirror her mom had gotten her for her eleventh birthday, it was a full body mirror and Fig had used it everyday until her horns had started really showing.

Now her horns had begun to curve slightly, and any time a breeze blew against them it sent flares of pain throughout her head. At night whenever it got too painful to even sit down because she’d have to lean back she would scratch at the bases of them. This wouldn’t have been possible with the nails she used to have, painted pink and all dainty and coming at a nice round edge, now they were sharp and pointed and hard, hard enough to scrape against the bones and leave marks in them. Fig would drag them through her scalp to the point that her head started to bleed and Sandralynn and Gilear would have to take her to the hospital. 

Fig didn’t want to focus on that though, just because she used to be happy didn’t mean that she had to look happy. And if Gilear was already so mad just because her hair wasn’t blonde like his and a slightly different shade of brown than her mother’s then fuck it, even just thinking the word used to seem so criminal to her but she had begun to use it more than any of the others she knew, so she picked up the rusty kitchen scissors And grabbed the hair that reached the back of her legs when she kept it down and she cut. And as she saw the hair fall it felt exhilarating. Words were popping into her head but she set them aside, memorizing them as lyrics to be used for later. So Fig kept cutting, she tied her hair up with as many hair ties as she could get, if they didn’t like her hair already then why would she give herself a good haircut?

But when she stopped and looked in the mirror something still felt off. With a shaking hand Fig took the scissors and cut. Bangs bobbed against her forehead, bringing a small relieved smile to her face. She ran her hand through them, recoiled when she felt her nails rake painfully against her horns. But she was on to something. She liked the look of her hair, liked the way it looked bad but in a good way. She liked the way it said “Stay the fuck back or get hit,” and she for the first time in a long while, despite her parents still yelling downstairs, despite her dad hating her, despite her mom forgetting what a happy family is supposed to look like, Fig felt content as she sat down with her base guitar and grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and begun writing down lyrics and teaching herself how to play guitar. 

It was Sunday, and she’d have to go to school tomorrow, but maybe she wouldn’t. Because as soon as Gilear yelled “She’s a demon! She has red eyes and fangs and horns and claws Sandralynn!” from downstairs Fig finally realized something, and a quick Fantasy Google check on her crystal proved it. She was a tiefling, which meant she had one mortal parent, and one devil parent. Her dad wasn’t Gilear, her dad was a devil. 

Fig had a plan.

Part One of Fig’s Fabulous Plan:  
Find my REAL dad   
Part Two of Fig’s Fabulous Plan:  
Become a totally sick rockstar   
Part Three of Fig’s Fabulous Plan:  
Never EVER fall in love

Fig sometimes wished that she would have never needed to make that plan. That she wouldn’t have had to test out her fire resistance on herself instead of having a father to tell her that she was fire resistant, NOT fire proof. Those two were VERY VERY different. That she wouldn’t have to listen to her mother and Gilear argue every night, wouldn’t have to see him glare at her or wake up at the dinner table every now and then with an uneaten plate of food abandoned in front of her. 

But then there were nights that she was glad(? That certainly wasn’t the right word for it but she had never been very poetic when it came to sentences straying away from lyrics) that the divorce had forced her out of the house a lot. She learned a lot about music and herself at the Black Pit, she made friends with the waitresses at the diner across the highway and managed to get fresh pie slices. If the divorce had never happened then Fog wouldn’t have gotten detention on the first day. She never would have made friends. 

She never would have broken the last part of her plan. 

If the divorce hadn’t had happened then Fig wouldn’t have found The Bad Kids, wouldn’t have found herself, wouldn’t have found what a REAL family looks like. She wouldn’t have found her father, restored her relationship with her other father and her mother, and most importantly.

She never would have found Ayda. 

Fig didn’t like to talk about the divorce, and for good reason, but she did respect it for having to happen. Did that mean that she liked it? Absolutely not, fuck that shit. But she did like her family (friends and girlfriend DEFINITELY included) so she wouldn’t gripe about it even if she wanted to. 

It still sucked whenever she woke up with nightmares about the yelling and screaming, and those days when she woke up and every time she saw Gilear he made her nervous that he’d start screaming at her. Or whenever someone would notice the scratches that now stretched to peak out over her hair from where they had grown with her horns. Those awful times when the dinner table made her insides tie themselves into knots and her legs stay glued to the floor despite everyone already taking their seats. Sometimes when that would happen Fig would say that she isn’t hungry and immediately leave the house, other times she’d accidentally sit as far away from Sandralynn as she could and find herself sitting at the quietest part of the table.

Which was a hard thing to do, not only because she was a loud person herself, but so were her friends and housemates. Whenever Fig left shed find herself either at that rundown old diner across the highway or at the Black Pit. She’d lose herself in some pie or the sickest jams she could listen to and then she’d return home after dark. Ayda always waited for her though, and after a few times of this having already happened, and wouldn’t ask her about it either. 

Ayda knew that Fig would explain in her own time, there was no need to rush it despite time being a very precious thing to her. All Ayda needed to know whenever that happened (which was thankfully and somewhat regretfully very little) was that Fig would need plenty of cuddles and kisses and quiet. All three of which Ayda was happy to supply. Sometimes though, whenever Fig had somehow gotten drinks at the Black Pit, she would want to talk with Ayda. She would ask simple everyday questions, how was your day? and have you eaten? or did you sleep well last night? Just simple questions, little decency questions. Small little kindnesses that Ayda would love to hear, whether she heard them during those little moments or not. 

Fig would run her hands through Ayda’s fire-y hair and run her eyes over every little detail of Ayda’s face, body, her voice, her personality. She’d compliment Ayda, little things like your eyes are pretty, or I like your wings, or you are perfectly acceptable. Ayda would thank her, and return the compliments, not out of common curtesy (Fig had told her that she didn’t need to do that, nor was it any form of expectation to keep their relationship going) but because she meant them and she loved the way they effected Fig. The way her mouth would have that little upturn of a smile and how her eyes would sparkle a little and her cheeks would give themselves away with a slight red tint.

“Hey Ayda?” “Yes Fig?” “I love you.” “I love you too.” “No, you don’t understand, I love YOU.” 

Ayda didn’t mind that Fig took her time to tell her what was ailing her. She would give Fig all the time in the world if she could. Perhaps she should begin another plan to steal her father’s watch? But that was an idea for the morning, for now Ayda just held Fig in her arms and listened as Fig gave subtle details of why she reacted to certain things and compliments freely given.


End file.
